Instruction
Please write an effective, proper paraphrase of between 75-110 words of the excerpt from a famous book about psychology above. Be precise and specific in your summary. The excerpt is from the opening chapter of Principles of Physiological Psychology by Wilhelm Wundt, who helped establish the field of experimental psychology. First published in 1874 in Leipzig, Germany, the book was later translated into English. Remember — your answer must be between 75 and 110 words.
1. The title of the present work is in itself a sufficiently clear indication of the contents. In it, the attempt is made to show the connection between two sciences whose subject-matters are closely interrelated, but which have, for the most part, followed wholly divergent paths. Physiology and psychology cover, between them, the field of vital phenomena; they deal with the facts of life at large, and in particular with the facts of human life. Physiology is concerned with all those phenomena of life that present themselves to us in sense perception as bodily processes, and accordingly form part of that total environment which we name the external world. Psychology, on the other hand, seeks to give account of the interconnection of processes which are evinced by our own consciousness, or which we infer from such manifestations of the bodily life in other creatures as indicate the presence of a consciousness similar to our own.
2.This division of vital processes into physical and psychical is useful and even necessary for the solution of scientific problems. We must, however, remember that the life of an organism is really one — complex, it is true — but still unitary. We can, therefore, no more separate the processes of bodily life from conscious processes than we can mark off an outer experience, mediated by sense perceptions, and oppose it, as something wholly separate and apart, to what we call ‘inner’ experience, the events of our own consciousness …
3. Psychologists, it is true, have been apt to take a different attitude towards physiology. They have tended to regard as superfluous any reference to the physical organism; they have supposed that nothing more is required for a science of mind than the direct apprehension of conscious processes themselves. It is in token of dissent from any such standpoint that the present work is entitled a ‘physiological psychology.’ —
APA reference: Wundt, W. (1874/1904). Principles of physiological psychology (E. Titchener, Trans.). Macmillan. APA in-text citation: (Wundt, 1874/1904)
